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Jan 15, 2016

Amazon's Man in the High Castle

Gornahoor Editor's Note: Ostensibly a review of some artifacts of popular culture including the
Man in the High Castle, the Vikings and Valkyrie, but a few may notice
something else . . .

Amazon recently released a dramatic television series, The Man in the High Castle, loosely based on Philip K Dick’s
novel of the same name first published in 1962. The premise is based on
the counter-factual history that the Axis powers won World War II. The
Pacific states are occupied by Japan and the Eastern states by Germany,
with a buffer zone around the Rockies.

It’s difficult to understand Amazon’s purpose, since the occupied USA
seems more attractive. Was that by accident or design? Or most likely,
the writers saw it as less attractive. That Nippon states were less
attractive, since the white citizens were pretty much in dhimmitude to
the Japanese. Nevertheless, one is struck by the Japanese code of honor
and politeness, at least among each other. Moreover, a government
official who failed in his duties felt shame to the extent that suicide
was preferable. Now in the USA, many politicians are willing to “accept
responsibility” for their failures, but that is something quite
different from accepting the consequences.

The Eastern sector was populated by normal families, who were well
groomed, polite, dined together, interacted with each other rather than
electronic devices, valued patriotism and education. Apparently the
intact family, in the mind of the Amazon Studio writers, sounds fascist
to the modern mind. On the negative side, the right to bear arms was
rejected and Bibles forbidden, available only on the black market. In
1962, a well-bred man in the USA would have been shocked that a
government would have that power, since he still “clung to his gun and
his Bible”. Nowadays the possession of guns and Bibles is considered
fascist and the utopian left is working to ban both of them; what was
fascist in 1962 is progressive today.

If the elimination of guns and bibles sounds normal to you, perhaps
assisted suicide still makes you queasy, at least it was unthinkable in
1962. When the son of the American Nazi officer John Smith starts
exhibiting symptoms of a genetic degenerative disease, the father is
given a suicide kit to use on the son. Nowadays, it is called “end of
life” counseling, and the “right to die” is increasingly accepted.
Moreover, the idea of euphemistic post-natal abortions
is gaining acceptance. So the idea of a hospital cremating the
handicapped and terminally ill, as in the series, is really a
foretelling of our own future rather than an imaginary fascist past.

There is even an annoying SJW, Juliana, who is headstrong in taking
on a mission she does not understand, oblivious to the collateral damage
she is causing. She illustrates the danger of the sex instinct, since
her boyfriend, a young nazi secret agent, and even her I Ching casting
Japanese boss, all had major crushes on her. Let’s just say some people
get hurt, especially the boyfriend’s sister, niece and nephew. The men
all compromise their own life missions for her.

So back to the important part of the story, which we will have to
fill in, since it was unclear in the series. The man in the high castle
is collecting films that depict alternate versions of reality. For
example, in one of them, the Allies won the war, in another the secret
agent assassinated the boyfriend.

Now we are getting into Philip K Dick territory, even if he himself
did not actually use that motif. In Gnosis, Boris Mouravieff compares
each person’s life to a film in which he has a leading part. Such as we
are, we are passive participants in the film, interacting with persons
for unknown reasons. However, the goal is to become the conscious agent –
writer and director – of script of one’s own life.

Perhaps that is the real point of the series, rather than as an
homage to our “superior” way of life. As Guenon pointed out, “The end of
one world is the beginning of another.” Awakening from the common dream
leads to the real world, but it must start with a few.

Valkyrie

The series includes a failed assassination attempt on Hitler, perhaps mirroring a real attempt in 1944, that Julius Evola, writing in 1952, claimed was little known. Valkyrie
is the title of a 2008 film, about the 1944 assassination attempt on
Hitler, starring Tom Cruise, so it is perhaps more well-known now. One
can easily get the impression from these shows that liberals and
progressives were interested in eliminating Hitler. However, in fact,
the attempt was engineered by the conservative elements in Germany who
did not regard Hitler as conservative or right-wing.

The Vikings

The History Channel has been airing a series about the Vikings at the
time they were becoming interested in England and France. The broad
outline is historically correct, although certainly not in every detail.
There is a lesson in it about a real “clash of civilizations”. A couple
of generations after Charlemagne, Europe had become Christianized while
the Vikings remained pagans. Although both sides practiced Realpolitik,
the Vikings had no regard for just way theory. Whenever they wanted
something, they went on a “raid”. Saxon England and Paris, as more
advanced, and possibly more effete, civilizations, provided attractive
targets for raids.

There may be lessons here for contemporary attempts at
multi-culturalism: it does not happen by wishful thinking. Even when a
Saxon king allowed a Viking settlement on his land, the problems did not
go away. Differences in race, religion, language, and culture are not
easily bridged.

The conflict between pagans and Christians is one of the more
interesting aspects. Despite their general amorality, there is still
something noble about the Vikings. They regard patriarchy as normative,
support their community, love and value their children, are indifferent
to pain, accept the tragic side of life, and look forward to an
afterlife. Ragnar, the Viking leader, tells his son that “happiness does
not matter”, i.e., it is neither the purpose of life nor a goal to
pursue.

The Nordic gods and stories are a real presence and even temptation.
Nevertheless, from an esoteric perspective all that must be left behind.
One Viking explains to a Christian monk that his gods are real, they
eat, fight, and so on. To him such humanized gods are regarded as a
strength. Yet, Boris Mouravieff tells us something different:

Reason attributes to the divine an attitude, a weakness, and even more
often, purely human motives… which tended to humanize the divinities.
The Good News announced by Jesus reversed this ancient conception,
calling for the divinization of the human in man by a second Birth; the
gateway to the Kingdom of God.

Some try to idealize the pagan life in its immediacy and closeness to
nature. They can’t see past the first birth into the state of nature.
The task of the esoterist is quite different: it is not to humanize the
gods, but rather to divinize the human.

A final thought: in our time, it is rare to see a movie or TV show
with an all white cast and no gay characters. If you are flirting with
white nationalism, you can look and then decide if you like that. I
suspect not, since there is no gay character to explain to the Vikings
how to act more manly.

When We Were Young

Avoid this if you can; I couldn’t. It concerns a culture clash
between a boomer and an ambitious millennial. There was a minor point
that was of interest, viz., acting either from innocence or experience.
The boomer was all high tech, but the millennial went retro. For
example, he played board games rather than electronic games, he used an
old mechanical typewriter for his scripts, sported a fedora, and owned
an extensive music collection on vinyl LPs.

I don’t see that millennials are going retro in droves, although
Barnes & Noble is phasing out CDs in favor of LPs. Now in fact I
play board and card games rather than electronic games, often wear a
fedora, and still have a nice collection of vinyl. But I do it naively,
since that was the world in which I was raised. There is not necessarily
a conscious choice, but more a matter of habit.

However, the millennial is acting ironically. He makes a conscious
decision to reject the contemporary option; it is not a habit, but
rather an acquired taste.

We are in an analogous position. The world of our fathers no longer
exists, so we can’t absorb that worldview automatically without thinking
about it much. Quite the contrary, we are faced with a choice since the
worldview of the modern world totally surrounds us. Hence, we can no
longer be naïve, but rather we need to know exactly why we adopt one
worldview while rejecting its alternatives.

For the innocent man, the will follows the intellect which was formed
by family, society, and church. The man of experience needs to
consciously create. He is in the situation described by Mouravieff:

By progressively taking his fate into his own hands, man at the same
time takes responsibility for all the partners in his film. It has
already been said that he must restore the original meaning of his film,
then push the development of the latter in such a way that the ‘play’
be properly played out to its intended denouement. The hero, while
working on himself, must apply himself to create new circumstances
around him,
which will enhance the unfolding of the action towards its originally intended conclusion.